UT Performance and Tweaks on G400's

[CoolBreeze]

Hi all,

I was really waiting on this UT demo...and it took me a while to find a place to dl it the day it came out. Well, finally i have it and all i can say is WOW...this is a great demo...i just wish it had another CTF map. Oh well. I found that running the demo at these settings give me the best performance:

-1024x768x32(full screen)
-Medium World Tex
-Medium Skin Tex
-Full Tex
-Disable the HUD(gives u a huge increase in fps, and you are still able to recieve messages...plus i thik it gets in the way...only handy for ctf really.)
-A3D enabled/or EAX...(disabling A3D gives me about 5-10 more fps, but i leave it enabled because the sound is great)

Online play gives me anywhere(depending on the map and amount of players):Average: 40-52 fps(Highs in the 80's)

Single Player with like 5 bots :Average: solid 60 fps(Highs in the 90's)

Putting the two other setting to HIGH really slows down my gameplay to like 23fps or lower. So...needless to say i never play with maxed out texture quality. Hopefully the next PD ICD(5.30) will help with its Direct X7 support. And who knows mb the turbo mini driver may do something for open gl...but i doubt it...I have to thank Icestorm for helping me compare benchmarks...if any of the rest of you play UT...then look for me online, and lets have some fun. L8r all.

------------------
P3 500(not overclocked)
128 MB PC100 SDRAM
SE440BX-2 Motherboard by Intel
Seagate 8.4 gig HDD
Diamond MX300 Sound Card
AOpen 40x CD ROM
Ethernet 32 bit PCI Card
Motorola Cable Modem
Matrox G400 32 OEM Single Head @150
17" CRT Monitor
Altec Lansing 2 Speakers and Sub

----CoolBreeze aka KAST----

[TheMorg]

This might sound like a daft question, but how can you tell the frame rate in UT? All I can say at the moment is that the following setup 'looks smooth enough' on my machine:

-1024x768x32(full screen)
-High World Tex
-High Skin Tex
-Full Tex
-HUD Enabled
-A3D/EAX enabled

This is the first FPS to have me giggling like a kid since Quake!

===========================
Asus K7M (100MHz)
Athlon 600
256Mb PC100 SDRAM
G400MAX (5.13)
RR-G (1.50beta)
19" Mitsubishi 900u
SBLive! (LiveWare 2.1)
Adaptec 2940U2W
18Gb IBM LVD HDD (10k rpm)
9Gb IBM LVD HDD (7200 rpm)
Plextor 8x/20x CD-R (SCSI2)
LG 2x DVDROM (EIDE)
Win98

[CoolBreeze]

Hi,

Ya its a great game alright...to show your fps statistics just go under the option TOOLS...and select Timedemo Results(with a check mark)....then just start up the game, single player or Multiplayer. Please post your results with online and offline results...PS...That is a nice rig u got there! Write back when you can...l8r.

------------------
P3 500(not overclocked)
128 MB PC100 SDRAM
SE440BX-2 Motherboard by Intel
Seagate 8.4 gig HDD
Diamond MX300 Sound Card
AOpen 40x CD ROM
Ethernet 32 bit PCI Card
Motorola Cable Modem
Matrox G400 32 OEM Single Head @150
17" CRT Monitor
Altec Lansing 2 Speakers and Sub

----CoolBreeze aka KAST----

[Marmita]

CoolBreeze Hi... I have more or less the same spec and I get the same results...

1024x768x32 (16bit ZBuffer)

Medium world details
Medium Skin details
high detail textures enabled

A3D (3dhardware) enable via advanced options

with 5 bots I get ~42 average please post your fps with 5 bots single player.

spec:
P3-500 (Not overclocked)
Asus P2B
128mb Toshiba 100Mhz 7ns CAS2 ram
MX300 (drivers ver 2.040)
G400 32mb DH (drivers ver 5.25 beta ICD)
Adaptec 2940U2W controller
Seagate Cheetah 9.1gb SCSI U2W hd
Plextor UltraPlex x32 SCSI cdrom
Smart&Friendly x8/x20 SCSI cd burner
ZIP 100mb drive (SCSI)
Creative x2 DVD-ROM drive.
ISA 3Com ethernet III LAN card
ISA Asuscom TAS100 ISDN passive adapter

[SPSUguy]

Hey,

How are ya'll enabling A3D? I see the option to enable hardware 3d sound... but not A3D specifically.

thanks

------------------
Abit BH6, Celeron 450, Matrox G400 32mb, 256mb ram, IBM 10GB, DVD 5x, MX300

[Scytale]

That is the option.

[Frank]

[The Rock]

Wow...you guys all have kick-ass systems. I feel like a guy with a 3-inch penis trying to get into the porno industry just reading your system stats. Just recently bought a vanilla G400 and Unreal Tournament runs silky smooth with all details set to high at 1024x768x32bit. If anyone wants to tell me exactly how to go about benchmarking (and tinkering with the settings) with the UT demo properly, I'll glady post some benchmarks from the "lower" end of the spectrum if your curious. My 3-inch penis system stats are:

P2 350
Asus P2B board
128 Meg PC100 SDRAM
Fujitsu 6.4G HD (to be replaced tomorrow by 17G Maxtor)
SB128 PCI

The Rock

[IceStorm]

CoolBreeze and I were just turning on the TimeDemo statistics and playing agains the computer on Turbine (well, I was on Turbine - harder on the graphics subsystems - more textures).

The V2 SLI rig I have, at 1024x768x16/high/high/detailed, ran at about 59 FPS, never lower than 27.

With the G400 MAX, 32bit Z buffer, triple buffering enabled, I had to crank the world and skin details down to medium to get close to that speed. 40 to 45FPS average, 20 or 25 FPS lowest.

If it isn't doing 40+ average, and can't keep above 25+ for the lowest, then it's not smooth, in my humble opinion. Rumor has it the problem with the G400 and UT is that the G400 can't do multitexturing properly, and thus is getting spanked hard on the demo. Anyone know if this is true?

I just tried again. Even at 640x480, with high/high, it's still slow. Knock it down to med/med, it's better. knock it down to 16bit, and it's fast enough, but still only as fast as 1024x768. Huh?

For now, I'm sticking with my V2 SLI rig.

P.S. I always leave the HUD on... I like to know what weapons/ammo loadout I'm carrying.

------------------
Primary System: PIII-540 (450@4.5x120), Soyo 6BA+ III, 256MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode. V2 SLI rig. Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, 3Com 3C905, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), 2nd Parallel Port, WD AC41800 18GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, Sharp JX-9400 LJ-II compatible, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM

Secondary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, 3Com 3C509, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Tertiary System: DFI G568IPC Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 96MB of non-parity RAM, Millennium II, Intel Pro/100+ client NIC, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

All specs subject to change.



[This message has been edited by IceStorm (edited 10-05-1999).]

[TheMorg]

Okay girls, time to kick some ass!

-Full Screen Mode
-High World Textures
-High Skin Textures
-Full Texture Detail
-HUD Disabled (to give it a fighting chance)
-High Sound Quality
-Hardware Sound Enabled
-Offline Play

32-bit
800x600=44fps
1024x768=34fps
1280x1024=29fps

16-bit
800x600=48fps
1024x768=41fps
1280x1024=35fps

Remember, this is with all the options set to max with the exception of the HUD, which seems to cripple performance.
===========================================

-Medium World Textures
-Medium Skin Textures

1024x768x32=48fps (41% improvement)
1024x768x16=60fps (46% improvement)

What gives? Are the 'High' textures that much nastier than the 'Medium' ones? Having said that, the visual quality with everything set to max is simply stunning, so I prefer to try that first and work downwards to get better performance.

I'll try the same with the 5.30 drivers when they're out. Any performance drop and I'll be back down to the 5.13 drivers!!!

[IceStorm]

The average frame rate isn't a big deal. What matters is how low your LOWEST FPS is while playing.

If you can average 40FPS, and get 20+ FPS as your LOWEST, then you're good to go for online gaming (and not getting spanked by those 12 year olds who have V2's and run them at 640x480 :-) )

I've heard rumors that the multitexturing engine on the G400 can't handle the high texture details on some games... UT being one of them. Can't remember where I read it - either Usenet or on a tech page. I'm fairly certain that this is the diff between high and medium.

Best place to see this slowdown:

- Set yerself to 1024x768

- Load up into the Turbine map, single player.

- Go to the split-level section where the shield belt is.

- stand under the overhang directly in front of the shield belt door, the place where there's a grid on the floor and water below it.

- move your head up and down, going from looking at the floor to the ceiling.

On high, this should be sluggish, at best, especially in 32bit.

On medium, it is better in 32bit.

On medium, it is fine at 16bit.

On a V2 SLI rig, with all options at max, 16bit, this is fast.

Notice the difference in texturing on those wire grids, and the walls around you. It isn't the water so much as it's the wire grid and water next to each other, from what I can tell. The water area doesn't seem to have this problem. Only texture it seems to be lacking is the wire mesh.

I honestly can't see much of a difference between 16bit and 32bit. I also can't figure out why there's a HUGE performance hit using 32 bit instead of 16 bit. I've tried enabling/disabling the 32bit Z buffer, and enabling/disabling triple buffering.

What G400 Tweak settings do you all use for UT?

[absalom]

I can't prove this, but I honestly think the performance decrease in UT when you go all out is due to the actual memory requirements it takes for a UT texture. There are reports that on s3 cards, when using s3metal, textures in UT (full version?) are upwards of 1024x1024 (wow). From all the current benchmarks I've seen, bringing down 32-bit depth helps alot. Also bringing down the texture detail to medium really really speeds things up. 3dfx cards don't even get to use high quality textures... you can enable it, hope, pray, whatever... your not getting full detail buddy. I don't know how UT handles textures, but if it's storing 512x512 textures at 32-bit.. then that's a ton of memory allocated for just 1 texture. And looking at how many different textures that are used per level in the UT demo, one can guess that these textures are not only detailed, but in variety. An uncompresed 512x512 32-bit texture would require 1 megabyte of storage. It's all a question of how the UT engine renders internally. Rendering at a 32-bit depth using 512x512 8-bit textures (palletized would be even better) shouldn't offer memory/bandwidth problems. The g400's slowdown at 32-bit and highest detail could be due to agp thrashing or bad texture management. Just a thought...


P.S. If you didn't already know, the g400 supports up to 2048x2048 texture sizes. Supposidly it also supports non-squared textures too... so you could have 2048x1024 dimensions. Something nvidia doesn't support as far as I know. What's funny is an uncompressed 2048x2048 32-bit texture require 16 megs of ram. Looks like compression may be the "thang" for you detail freaks.

One more thing, triple buffering with vsync disabled is pointless, imo. Your just wasting more of your g400's memory trying to use 3 frame buffers when your not even sync'ing them. It should theoretically help out vsync though...

[This message has been edited by absalom (edited 10-05-1999).]

[Frank]

Yes, I was wondering if the detail slider (texture slider in Quake3) would offer different textures for the G400 and Voodoo2. Since their maximum texture management were different.

[DentyCracker]

I get "out of video memory" when I try 800x600 any colour depth. Of course online I am meat with lousy fps and ping times (15 fps and >500ms)It will get worse before it gets better (Can u say P-Pro 200 and ATI PCI Charger)

------------------
For now still
Cracker_99
VA-503+rev 1.2A, 450 MHz K6-III, 96 MB EDO DRAM, 10 GB Maxtor HD, SB Live!, Millennium G200 8MB AGP, AVerMedia TV98, AOPEN CRW 9420, FPS 1000, 2 MS SideWinder Gamepads
Win98 (2222A), BeOS 4.5.2, Mandrake 6.1
soon to be
Pentium Pro 200, 64 MB RAM, some HD, AOPEN Burner, Ensoniq VIVO 90, ATI charger Rage something (hey $28) yada yada

[IceStorm]

First, The Unreal guys did an INCREDIBLE job on the 256x256 V2 textures. I mean amazing - no V2 game short of the original Unreal even comes close to the texture quality of UT on a V2. No blurring of the textures up close - they look sharper than ANY other game I've ever played on my V2's (they make Q2's textures look like mud).

Having said that, the High World setting DEFINITELY looks "more textured" than the Medium G400 setting. The G400's Medium world setting looks flat.

I'll try turning off triple buffering and keeping off vsync to see what happens. I'll also check into a console option to limit texture sizes (there is one for HL...).